Isn't it time you pushed yourself?
by Flashing The Floods
Summary: On someone else? He should have known that she would show up on his doorstep, desperate and pleading with smeared cobalt mascara and a pitifully fabricated excuse for every poison word. Castiel/Debrah. Post episode 17.


**Author's Note: This is the result of venting and listening to A Silent Film. Rated for cursing and hints at sex. **

Castiel spent the duration of the evening following Debrah's embarrassing true face reveal in his room. Front door locked, phone off, under the covers and in (aside from Demon's snoring) complete silence. He could swallow his pride and allow himself a moment of weakness. He could seek solace in solitude and let everything that happened break him a little bit. Because if he didn't allow himself that, it would just end breaking him a little bit more.

The unwilling but inevitable stroll down the memory lane of lies brought him to tears. His shoulders shook with sobs under the phantom sensations of her hands on his skin. Salty droplets leaked between his eyelids and traveled down the cheeks she'd left the sweetest kisses on. He hiccuped on the expired 'I love yous' that once passed his lips and rolled from tongue to tongue when she returned them. No, not returned them. _Repeated_ them. He knew now that she had never requited any of that.

Someplace in between thoughts of her vicious words today and her gentle murmurs the year before, he'd exhausted himself with all the hurting and all the crying. Somewhere in between confusion and misery, and the image of her alien face today clashing with the image of her passionate and naked beneath him, it leeched away the last bit of life he had in him. He went out like a light.

The morning was better, as mornings usually are. He was simultaneously heavy and deflated, with insides feeling empty and the outside weighing him down. But he wasn't crying anymore. And he wasn't retracing the nights they spent together, wondering with excruciating yearn what words she never meant and how he never, ever noticed they were hollow. He got up, put some some clothes on, sent Lysander a text and let Demon outside. Breakfast was a notion barely less than nauseating, but coffee would do.

He'd just prepared a cup of instant when he heard the knock at the door.

He figured it would be Lysander. Possibly Iris, possibly even Lynn. He didn't exactly want to answer, but a sense of obligation nagged at him. All of the above people would be worried and wanting to make sure he was okay, and not answering the door would most definitely leave the impression that he wasn't. So he dragged himself to the knob and pulled it open, a prepared reassurance ready to cross his lips. But it wasn't Lysander or Iris or Lynn. It was _her. _

He should have known he would see her.

He should have known that she would show up on his doorstep, desperate and pleading with smeared cobalt mascara and a pitifully fabricated excuse for every poison word.

Maybe he did know and just didn't want to know that he knew.

He went to close the door but she was fast as a snake (as always), hand darting in between the crack before it could shut her away from him. And even though the urge to just say fuck it and smash her fingers with the damn door until they were bloody and broken and falling off of their stumps for all he cared was there, he just couldn't. He wasn't like her. He wasn't cruel.

"Castiel," she breathed in a quivery, pleading whisper as her hand curled around the door, "Please. Please just hear me out."

"If you ever gave a shit about me. If you ever cared the slightest bit at all, then you would just go home." He refused to meet her eyes. They would no doubt be swimming with phony sentiments and need. And he was just a little bit terrified that he'd believe them.

"Cas, I did- I _do_ care. That's why I'm here. All those things I said yesterday weren't really true. I honestly didn't mean them." She pulled open the door a little more and had the audacity to touch his face. The contact made his skin crawl. He slapped her hand away like a fly. And before he could even really think about what he was doing, he slapped something else too.

Debrah was frozen in place, eyes widened in disbelief. She didn't make a sound. Her hand fell away from the door and stretched to caress the red mark on her rapidly puffing cheek. Castiel regretted the action and yet...And yet he wasn't sorry about it. That probably didn't make sense. Hell if he cared. It didn't make sense that he'd been in love with a facade, a mirage that wasn't with a smile that had been.

"Just stop, will you!? Haven't you put me through enough?"

She shrank back a step, hand still to her face and eyes beginning to glisten. Real tears. Like the ones he saw yesterday, but not tears of guilt or remorse, or anything that might have been a salve to the wound she left in his heart. She wasn't sorry she hurt him. She wasn't sorry she hurt anyone. She was just sorry that she lost a marketing ploy. "Kitten-"

"No! Stop! Stop, damn it, just stop." He raked his hands through his hair, voice softening in defeat. "Quit fucking with my head. You should've had your fill of it by now. Leave me alone." His eyes finally met hers, dull and enervated. "Just leave me alone."

He hoped she would have enough courtesy in her to just grant him that one request. After everything, she must care enough to do that, right? No one could be heartless enough to deny a person who'd truly loved them their own peace of mind.

But all she did was open her mouth to tearfully whine another deception.

The ghost of a decent note they might have been able to leave off on now fractured, Castiel numbly slammed the door in her face and padded off to the kitchen to reheat the coffee.


End file.
